My overwhelming experience is that the sort of developers unironically using the phrase "vibe coding" are not interested in or care about good design and code quality.
If I can keep adding new features without introducing big regressions that is good design and good code quality. (Of course there will come a time when it will not be possible and it will need a rewrite. Same like software created by top paid developers from the best universities.)
As long as we can keep new bugs to the same level as hand written code with LLM written code, I think, LLMs writing code is much superior just because of the speed with which it allows us to implement features.
We write software to solve (mostly) business efficiency problems. The businesses which will solve those problems faster than their competitors will win.
In light of OpenAI confessing to shareholders there’s no there there (being shocked by and then using Anthropics MCP, being shocked by and then using Anthropics Skills, opening up a hosted dev platform to milk my awesome LLM business ideas, and now revealing that inline ads a-la Google is their best idea so far to make, you know, make money…), I was thinking about those LLM project statistics. Something like 5-10% of projects are seeing a nice productivity bump.
Standard distribution says some minority of IT projects are tragi-bad… I’ve worked with dudes who would copy and paste three different JavaScript frameworks onto the same page, as long as it worked…
AirFryers are great household tabletop appliances that help people cook extraordinary dishes their ovens normally wouldn’t faster and easier than ever before. A true revolution. A proper chef can use one to craft amazing food. They’re small and economical, awesome for students.
Chefs just call it “convection cooking” though. It’s been around for a minute. Chefs also know to go hot (when and how), and can use an actual deep fryer if and when they want.
The frozen food bags here have AirFryer instructions now. The Michelin star chefs are still focusing on shit you could buy books about 50 years ago…
Coding is merely a means to an end and not the end itself. Capitalism sees to it that a great many things are this way. Unfortunately only the results matter and not much else. I'm personally very sorry things are this way. What I can change I know not.
Not sure it's the gotcha you want it to be. What you said is true by definition. That is, vibe coding is defined as not caring about code. Not to be confused with LLM-assisted coding.
I care about product quality. If "good design" and "code quality" can't be perceived in the product they don't matter.
I have no idea what the code quality is like in any of the software I use, but I can tell you all about how well they work, how easy to use they are, and how fast they run.
